The competitive landscape for marketing dollars is tight. Your budget is tight and somewhere in there you have to make room for social media marketing, website hosting/design, content marketing, search engine optimization (SEO) and social media marketing (SEM). And, that’s just your digital marketing spend. Add to that any print media, billboards, PR and the like, and there is never marketing money left over at the end of the month.

Budgets are tight and each marketing dollar has to generate returns – so why do so many small to medium sized businesses spend money on things they don’t understand and don’t need? The answer lies in the question.

Reputation management is supposed to be the process of listening for brand mentions and actioning them quickly. This sounds useful, and it is necessary. But let’s not fool ourselves – this is not what many repuration management firms are doing. They are doing the monitoring, but leaving it up to you to fix the mess. And, because so many SMBs are already spending marketing budget on social media monitoring and content marketing (and these services come equipped with listening/actioning capabilities bundled in), adding reputation management is just paying for something twice.

However, reputation management firms (most of them anyway), aren’t providing the monitoring that you thnk they are – and many of them are engaging in extortionist activities. Even many of the scrupilous ones are merely crawling the web once a week, and generating a report that auto-sends to your email. You can do the same thing for free with a Google Alert.

It just makes no sense to allot valuable marketing dollars to this activity.

When Reputation Management Is Necessary

Some businesses do require this service. If you are one of the unluckly individuals who are being targeted by folks (competitors, ex-spouses) who are out to smear you, then you need help – but you need an expert, not a run of the mill automated service. We can make a recommendation to a rockstar in the industry who will help you at a low cost and with proven results. But, most SMBs don’t have this issue.

Many businesses (car dealerships, salons, etc) require Google reviews to show that they are trustworthy and represent a good value for consumers. Large companies and those in an oft complained about industry (food, telecommunications, etc.) need to know when someone is talking about them, especially negatively, so they can respond in a timely fashion.

But even in such cases, these busineses don’t need the cookie cutter, automated reporting that most of these firms provide. In these cases, they need PR, marketing and social media, not an emailed report a week after the fact that they still have to respond to on their own.

If you don’t understand a service, push back when a salesperson insists that you need something. Make them show you other businesses in your sector who are using them (and benefitting). An untangible ‘every business needs this’ is not a real buyiing need.

Check out this handy chart that details all you need to know about your budget and how to divvy it up.

*Infographic created by Salesforce.

Or if you want us to look at your budget and help you trim the fat so that you can spend your money wisely, please reach out. A budget analysis is always free here, and with marketing dollars tight, you should know that every dollar is pushing towards increased revenue.

Talk to our team now